


To Embrace All Children

by sphilia



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Ambition: Light Fingers (Fallen London), Fire, Gen, Intimidation, POV Second Person, Parenthood, choking (on smoke), narrative that is essentially one prolonged panic attack, not the other kind, the moon-miser hybrid is the player character's child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphilia/pseuds/sphilia
Summary: The birth of your child is at hand. Mr Fires wants to speak with you. You already know where to go. You already know what you must do.Semi-retelling of the meeting with Mr Fires in Light Fingers.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	To Embrace All Children

_The aberration,_ Mr Fires says, and so you say through lips blue with fear:

_don’t call it that. it’s just a baby._

And Mr Fires looks angry and disappointed and its furnace eyes burn into you, and if the stakes weren’t so impossibly high, you think that it might have cuffed you for your insolence.

(And if you tried to run down here, lose it amongst the cramped, bulging shelves, all it would have to do is take the lift and leave you, alone and small and swallowed by the dark, and why does your mouth taste so like ancient soil? You have to get out of here you have to get out of here you have to g)

 _Silence,_ the Master snarls, _I will call my creature whatever I like. You may have stolen a seat at this table, but do not forget your place, thief._

Yes, you are a thief, and yes, you are a low-life, and yes, bringing about this birth will be the most audacious con you ever pull off, and yes, you were born to die anonymously in a ditch and not to hold the fate of a wretched, fragile little life in your calloused, inadequate hands. But it needs you, now. It needs you to be brave. Even if that means, for the moment, swallowing everything you would dearly like to say to Mr Fires that alternately burns and freezes in your gullet every time it looks at you with its calculating firebrand eyes, and _remembering your place_.

The mask you wear over your eyes is blank, unpainted grey, and you know your face is blank and stiff behind it, too, when you bow your head, but Mr Fires loves your submission anyway, or else is too stupid to see that it isn’t, while it gloats and expounds and inflates its own ego for its self-righteous repulsive purpose. Whatever its purpose is; you’re hardly listening. It says it loves London, but the London it loves is a London with Mr Fires in it, and a London with Mr Fires in it is a place that your child can never call home, so what does it mean to you? London is a wound and Mr Fires is the tick that takes and takes and takes and takes from Clara and Dr Vaughan and Hephaesta and your baby and the Moon-Miser that weeps at the heart of the Orphanage and the patients you broke out and the patients that remain. And it takes from you, too.

It’s good that you have your mask, because you think your anger would burn straight through your eyes if you had to look directly at it, and you still need your eyes. Your own arms wrapped around you feel like all that’s holding you up, you paper-thin effigy, transparent spun-glass chess piece, prop for whatever game Mr Fires thinks is being played here, not yours, certainly, or it wouldn’t be trying to capture your interest with a _diamond_ \--

It isn’t even the size of a cow.

 _if its value is incalculable, how am i supposed to sell it,_ you say through numb lips, you’re so cold, your teeth feel like ice in your mouth, like they don’t fit right, _am i meant to cut it into pieces? chip fragments from the surface? how many fences do you think i know that deal in magic rocks?_

You never knew before that Mr Fires could boil with rage--or maybe just sheer astonishment at your cheek--quite so literally, the outline of its cloak twitching and juddering like something less civilized wants to break loose, to strike you down like the worm you are. You shrink back, and that seems to mollify it marginally. It knows how powerless you are, and it likes that you know, too.

 _The pride you take in your own ignorance is an unfortunate character flaw, little thief,_ it rumbles, looming just to remind you how much bigger than you it is. _No matter. When you see it, you will comprehend. You will never want anything else in your life._

Like Hephaesta and the zee, you think with bubbling nausea. Like Poor Edward and you. You don’t want to see this diamond. You’re so tired of wanting things, you think you could be sick right here at Mr Fires’ feet.

But your unsettled silence satisfies it, and you almost begin to think, like an idiot, that you can survive this with no more harm than your debasement, and then it demands a _promise_ from you, and you don’t want to promise Mr Fires anything, can’t bear to even imagine that chain wrapped around your throat and in its hands, and is there anything that can bind two people more tightly to each other than a broken word? You’ve lied to powerful and dangerous people before, of course you have, but Mr Fires is a huge and flickering shadow in the lantern light and it is a Master and it thinks it has a claim on you and it says _Will you do this for me?_ and you say

_no_

_no, i probably won’t_

(It’s not much of a triumph for the value of honesty; not when the _yes_ you gave Poor Edward still burns in your gut like heavy coal. But then, you know in the most intimate lines of your bones that very, very soon, you will kill Poor Edward. So you suppose it doesn’t really matter.)

It’s angry, which you expect, but not as angry as it could be. You might be getting used to being informed of exactly how off-putting it finds your willful, stubborn stupidity, although snarled words like _if there was time_ and _break you in properly_ are a tad alarming. It’s almost funny that it still seems to regard you as some sort of informal employee, whether you like it or not. What is it going to do when you don’t do as it wants? Fire you?

You remember a gift: Poor Edward's parents' hearts in a jar. Your would-be paramour was ‘broken in’ in the bowels of the Orphanage. Suddenly the joke isn’t funny anymore.

 _You will come to your senses,_ says Mr Fires at last, with the unshakable confidence of a king, or at least of a factory owner used to having many men with clubs at its disposal to enforce its will. You don’t like it very much.

Maybe it sees that, in the unhappy downturn of your exposed mouth, or the stubborn set of your shoulders; when it kicks the lantern over, you can’t tell if the monstrous pleasure in its eyes is for you or the love stories. It’s another little humiliation that it won’t even let you rear back in alarm, grabbing you by the back of your clothes with clawed fingers that dig into your spine like spider legs. It leads you to the elevator like a scruffed pet and holds you there, far enough away from itself to make clear its distaste, but close enough to make you feel small, which you would almost respect if you weren’t coughing yourself dizzy from fumes and smoke.

You’re pitifully glad it can’t see the tears blur your stinging eyes under your mask, and wouldn’t it be the height of pathetic irony if Mr Fires kills you on pure accident, just from ignorance that human lungs aren’t meant to be stained by whatever horrid, ancient dust is being exhumed by all those burning clay tablets? In your lab, you have to take breaks when transcribing Correspondence, because the slightest smell of smoke makes your throat close up and attempt to climb out of your mouth, and this is so much worse, like someone holding you down and pouring dirt into your lungs, packing it tighter and tighter and knowing with cold despair that they won’t stop until you burst with it, until your lungs give out and tear at the seams like worn out burlap sacks, and it’s not even trying to torture you on _purpose_. It won’t _stop_.

But you’re alive to stumble to your knees onto the disgusting, slime-slick cobblestone outside the warehouse, your legs buckling under you the moment Mr Fires lets you go. You imagine it watching you sob and gag for breath with impatient contempt, but when you can finally see and hear again, when the chill creeping from cold stone and into your fingers brings you back to reality, it seems barely to notice you, occupied with admiring the tendrils of smoke licking out beneath the warehouse door, puffed up with dreadful satisfaction.

 _My, I do hope I get to see Mr Wines’ face when it gets the news,_ it murmurs idly, but with such rich, joyful malice that you briefly worry, deliriously, for Mr Wines’ safety. But it is a Master of the Bazaar, and frankly, better it than you. May its misery keep Mr Fires too busy to turn that malice on your head for many years to come.

But you’ve really fucked up this meeting, haven’t you? You feel light-headed and ill and you are kneeling like a supplicant, and maybe you really would beg at this point, for your life and for Clara’s life and for your baby’s life. Please, please, my Lord, take me, just don’t take my child. Stupid, smoke-addled thought. You have nothing it wants but your child.

When it gives you the moon-silk swaddling anyway, dark and shimmering and blessedly cool to the touch like midnight nacre, you mumble _thank you, sir_ in such a pitiful, plaintive whisper that you immediately wish Mr Fires would just kill you right then and there. Instead its eyes gleam with the satisfaction of watching a particularly stupid pet finally learn a trick, and you hate it for that, and you hate yourself, and you hate that you need the swaddling too much to tell it where it can stick it.

 _I trust you’ll make the right decision,_ it purrs into your ear before finally, finally letting you go on unsteady legs, intermittently coughing, moon-silk clutched to your chest like it’s all that’s keeping you alive. You feel weak as a diamond-sized kitten. But Mr Fires is right. You will make the right decision.

All a parent wants is for their child to be happy.


End file.
